What a way to celebrate Mother's Day...watching Meg leave for the UK, knowing I won't see her for at least a year, possibly longer. I don't let my mind go to the other possibilities...the ones where I know she'll be going to Iraq not too long after getting settled into her base in the UK. No, I won't think about that.
I know I said I was going to post the rest of my breastfeeding but this week is the last I will have had to spend with my eldest daughter for a long time and I just couldn't bring myself to finish writing it when my heart wasn't really in it.
Instead, I've been absorbing every moment of having this brave, strong woman at home with me. She's so different from the girl I watched pack an overnight bag as she prepared to leave for boot camp back in November. Her little girl edges have now been honed into strong, defined womanly lines...a woman who knows how to use a weapon in defense of her country and her fellow man. A woman who spent weeks crawling through the 90F+ sand in the Texas flatlands in order to learn how to ambush the enemy and take down combatant strongholds and grew the kind of backbone some grown men will never have!
There are tattoos where there was once smooth olive skin...but there is also a mettle to her spirit which makes her stand taller and stronger. There are now the bright orange embers of cigarettes that rest between her lips instead of school-girl lollypop flavored lipgloss...but there are also oaths of loyalty and commitment that flow with a confident sense of capability. This child, who grew from but the tiniest seed in my womb, now - some twenty years later, stands proud, determined, and courageous and ready to embrace the adventures that await her and do whatever may be asked of her.
My brain knows all this yet my heart feels the keen pain of a mother about to set one of her own, free...really and truly free, at last. Yet, as I write the words, and then look over them, it just feels like a tangled up jumble coming out of my head and I don't feel adequately equipped to articulate the cyclone of emotions, thoughts and memories going through my head right now.
I'm so excited for Meg, yet I grieve for the past that we never fully experienced because I wasn't there for 8 years, and I think that my regret over the errors and mistakes I've made, keeps me from genuinely being able to completely let go. But then, when do mothers ever really let go?
Despite my inner emotional tug-o-war, I'm coveting every moment of having her close to me, and laughing like a fool at the antics of she and her friends who have come all the way from Maine, Massachusetts and western New York to spend these last stateside days of hers, with both Meg and her family.
More than all of that, I want her to soak up this time of acting silly, staying up all night, cramming four bodies onto one small air mattress, eating too much junk, and laughing...especially the laughter. There will be time for the business of being an adult, in the days, weeks and months to come. Right now I want her to cram as many of these crazy-fun moments in and to hold them close and revel in the light of these times and then be able to call upon them during times when the darkness and harsh edges of the world surround her.
I want her to...
...remember sitting on the shore with her mom in Maine and just inhaling the salty breeze off of the Atlantic.
...smile when she thinks of Gaby running into to her bedroom with Bunny Bunny Bunny and jumping into bed with her.
...laugh when she thinks about having her best friends here at the house and squished around her as they watched Paranormal Activity.
...giggle when she remembers wading out into the lake and being splashed by Linda.
...feel great about herself when she thinks about how incredibly proud I am of her and how much I love her.
...know how amazing I think she is and how I don't think I could ever ask of myself, the things she is asking of herself and the things her country may eventually ask of her.
My mommy-heart is both bursting with pride and stinging with the pains of letting go. Only a mother could experience this sort of painfully happy conundrum.
